Freedom in the World 2021 Report

  • The Freedom in the World 2021 report has downgraded India’s status from ‘Free’ to ‘Partly Free’.
  • It pointed to a decline in global democracy over the last 15 years.
  • The report said that nearly 75% of the world’s population lived in a country that faced deterioration over the last year.
  • The most free countries in the world, with a score of 100, are Finland, Norway and Sweden.
  • The least free with a score of 1 are Tibet and Syria. 
  • The report is published by US based human rights watchdog Freedom House.
  • India’s score was 67, a drop from 71/100 from last year 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Hamas V. PLO

The irony in the ongoing conflict is that Hamas, whose founding members were encouraged by Israel in the 1970s and 80s against Yasser Arafat’s secular national movement, has turned out to be Israel’s biggest rival in the Palestinian territories. HAMAS Hamas was established after the first intifada broke out in 1987, as an offshoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.  Intifada was the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.  The first intifada lasted from 1987 to 1993, and the second began in 2000. As strife between Israel and Palestine continued to soar as the latter resorted to the First Intifada, or uprising, in December 1987, Hamas as an organisation led by Sunni-Islamic fundamentalists, began to take shape.  Hamas could gain immediate and immense popularity within the protesting Palestinians because it was ...
Read more

G7 global corporate Tax Deal

Image
The Group of Seven (G7) countries have backed the proposal to impose a common global corporate tax. It would be aimed at preventing multinational businesses from evading taxes and also squeeze the havens which attract tax evaders due to the low-rate jurisdictions.  The consensus to adopt a common tax rate was reached at the G7 finance ministers' meeting held in Buckingham (London) on June 5.  THE PROPOSAL The tax proposal endorsed by the US, the UK, France and other G7 countries has two parts.  The main part of the proposal states that countries around the world should tax their home companies' overseas profits at a rate of at least 15%.  The companies have multiple branches spread across various jurisdictions, they transfer the bulk of their profit in accounts set up in countries that offer the lowest tax rate.  Often, these tax havens are the Caribbean Islands such as Bahamas or British Virgin Islands, or at times, countries like Ireland where the corp...
Read more

The statue of Swami Vivekananda at the JNU campus

 Prime Minister Narendra Modi virtually unveiled a life-sized statue of Swami Vivekananda at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) campus on November 12. JNUSU (JNU students' union), un response, planned to protest on campus.  They believe the Modi government “openly supported” violence on campuses and is attacking universities with the National Education Policy which will result in fund cuts and privatization of education. FUNDING CONTROVERSY It was on June 30, 2017 that JNU’s Executive Council (EC) first gave approval for the statue.  The administration said it was installing the statue to give the campus a more “pleasing look” as Vivekananda had contributed to “nation building”. The administration remained mum on who was funding the statue and how much it would cost.  Then JNU Students’ Union president N Sai Balaji filed several RTIs to know about the funding. In January 2018, he filed an RTI seeking the total cost of construction of the statue as well as the sour...
Read more